local star.

When Mary and Joseph found their 12-year-old son Jesus talking with the teachers in the temple,

he explained to his parents that he had to be about his father's business.

What did he mean by that?

Well, today on Truth for Life, Alistair Bagg takes a closer look at this brief glimpse

into Jesus' early life and his unchanging purpose.

What we have in this little incident is the only recorded material in the gospels of the

life of Jesus as a young boy, as a growing young man.

This is it all, and Luke chooses not to include the story of the arrival of the wise men

or of the flight into Egypt, but he has been determined, he says, in his opening remarks,

as he writes to Theophilus, that he would provide an orderly account of all of the material

that was necessary to know in order that in the knowing of this material, those who

read the gospels, might become absolutely certain.

So there is a certain knowledge that the Holy Spirit provides for us concerning the growth

and development of Jesus as a young man, and it is that that we are about to consider.

We should notice that it was not in the Holy City of Jerusalem that Jesus was growing

up, rather in this despised, half-heaven place, Galilee, and in a particularly obscure little

place by the name of Nazareth, and it was from here that his parents took him up to Jerusalem

for this feast.

They went on a trip.

There would have been a measure of expectation, they would have said, when are we going to Jerusalem

now?

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